K-Agon 2 - Preliminary Round 1

Moderator says: “There will be no test questions in this year's tournament. Subsequent questions will count for points. Good luck and have fun!”

1. Who ignores the repeated advice of a man born on the same night as him named Polydamas, ignores his wife’s cautionary story of the death of Eëtion, her father, and ignores Priam’s and Hecuba’s pleas not to fight Achilles?

HECTOR

B1: Eëtion ruled a city of what name at the foot of Mt. Placus before Achilles killed him while sacking it?

(HYPOPLACIAN) THEBE(S) // (CILICIAN) THEBE(S)

B2: In Iliad 12, Polydamas unsuccessfully advises Hector to retreat when he sees what type of animal harm an eagle that is carrying it, causing the eagle to drop it among the troops?

(BLOOD-RED) SNAKE

2. Seeking to re-crown Astyages, whom his father may have fought at a battle that ended after a solar eclipse, what ruler crossed the Halys River to unsuccessfully attack Cyrus the Great and destroy his own great empire?

CROESUS (OF LYDIA)

B1: Croesus’ kingdom, Lydia, used what naturally occurring alloy to produce early coins?

ELECTRUM

B2: Name Croesus’ father, a man who fought the Medes at the Battle of the Eclipse and likely introduced those coins.

ALYATTES

3. “Fine quarters for women,” “αἴκα,” “μολὼν λαβέ,” and “either with your shield or upon it” are all examples of what city’s terse sayings, which are also called “laconic”?

SPARTA

B1: What Spartan declared μολὼν λαβέ in response to a demand by an enemy ruler?

LEONIDAS

B2: The response of “αἴκα,” or “if,” was given to Philip II’s threat “if I invade Laconia, I will throw you out.” However, this was the Spartans’ second laconic response to Philip, because they had previously answered “neither” to what question?

SHOULD {I // PHILIP (II)} COME AS FRIEND OR {FOE / ENEMY}? [ACCEPT EQUIVALENTS]

4. What genre is addressed in the extant work of an author from Amasia and in a 10-book, 2nd-century A.D. work called Ἑλλάδος περιήγησις — treatises respectively written by Strabo and his literary successor Pausanias?

(CULTURAL) GEOGRAPHY // TRAVEL(OGUE)

B1: Pausanias’ Description of Greece is primarily focused on cultural geography, but does contain some naturalism and botany in its last section, echoing what author’s Historia Plantārum?

THEOPHRASTUS

B2: At what place in Attica does Pausanias begin the first book of his Description of Greece?

(CAPE) SUNIUM // (CAPE) SOUNION

5. What property — lost in a Greek word’s first syllable if it also occurs in the second syllable per a law advanced by Hermann Grassmann — occurs in the letters χ, θ, and φ, which are pronounced with an exhalation of breath?

ASPIRATION / ASPIRATED

B1: What is the meaning of the verb τρέφω, which was originally θρέφω before the initial aspirate dissimilated?

(TO / I) FEED / SUPPORT / EDUCATE / THICKEN / NOURISH // (TO / I) CAUSE TO GROW [ACCEPT EQUIVALENTS]

B2: For the adjective ταχύς, give the Attic comparative — a form that had aspirates in the first two syllables before the sound changes described by Grassmann’s law occurred.

θάττων

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6. Gold-leaf tablets from southern Italian graves give eschatological advice to followers of what religion, which believed that the Titans ate the dismembered pieces of Zagreus’ body and followed literature supposedly written by Eurydice’s husband?

ORPHISM // ORPHIC (RELIGION)

B1: The two longest poems in the Orphic Hymns are the Lithica, on the properties of various stones, and an Orphic reworking of what epic poem in which the role of Orpheus is significantly elevated relative to the original?

(APOLLONIUS RHODIUS’) ARGONAUTICA

B2: The Titans’ destruction of Zagreus is often identified with what maenadic ritual in which followers of the god would ritually dismember animals or human beings? Please give the Greek word.

SPARAGMOS

7. What city accepted pleas from the tyrant Terillus to end an exile that the forces of Acragas had imposed, beginning an invasion that culminated in 480 B.C. with its defeat at Himera under the command of Hamilcar?

CARTHAGE

B1: What Syracusan tyrant, the predecessor to Hiero, led the victorious forces at Himera alongside Theron of Acragas?

GELO(N OF SYRACUSE)

B2: A crucial point in the engagement came when the Syracusans intercepted a letter that Hamilcar had sent asking for cavalry from what city, whose conflict with Egesta later prompted the Sicilian Expedition?

SELINUS

8. Words such as ἀσπίδιον or παίδιον, as well as ἀνθρωπίσκος and ἐπύλλιον, belong to what class of nouns, with ἐπύλλιον being related to the noun ἔπος?

DIMINUTIVES // DIMINUTIVE NOUNS [PROMPT ON “DENOMINATIVES”]

B1: Many Homeric words are diminutive in form but not in meaning, as with πεδίον, which has what meaning?

PLAIN / FIELD [ACCEPT EQUIVALENTS]

B2: Other diminutives provide notable shifts in meaning from their base word, as with the diminutive θυρίς, which comes from θύρα. Please define either θυρίς or θύρα.

θυρίς = WINDOW or θύρα = DOOR

9. What author, two of whose siblings appear in the recently discovered “Brothers Poem,” legendarily died by jumping from cliffs at Leucas, supposedly loved the poet Alcaeus, and was termed the “Tenth Muse” by Plato?

SAPPHO

B1: Sappho was perhaps a contemporary of what Mytilenean tyrant, a member of the Seven Sages who had an extended feud with Alcaeus?

PITTACUS (OF MYTILENE)

B2: Sappho 16 begins with the lines “some say an army of cavalry, others an army of foot-soldiers, others an army of ships is the most beautiful thing on this black earth.” Name either the woman who is addressed in this poem or the thing that Sappho herself declares to be the most beautiful.

ANACTORIA or {WHATEVER / WHOMEVER} ONE {LOVES / DESIRES} [ACCEPT EQUIVALENTS]

10. What Greek verb, with what meaning, is described in the following clues: it combines with a verb for “to eat” in the word “esophagus”; it lies at the root of the name of a rhetorical device where a word is repeated at the beginning of successive clauses; it lies at the root of “paraphernalia” and “metaphor”?

φέρω / φέρειν / οἰσῶ / οἴσειν = {TO / I} {CARRY / BEAR}

B1: What derivative of φέρω is a name that means “bringer of victory”?

BERENICE / PHERENICE

B2: What is the meaning of σάρξ, which lies at the root of “sarcophagus” with φαγεῖν, as well as at the root of “sarcasm”?

FLESH / BODY

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11. What sport is the focus of Sophocles’ lost tragedy The Men of Larissa, which details the funeral games held by Teutamides where the grandfather of Perseus was killed by the hero’s errant throw?

DISCUS(-THROWING) [ACCEPT EQUIVALENTS]

B1: Amphiaraüs won the javelin and discus competitions at the first Nemean games, which honored the death of what youth, euphemistically termed Archemoros, or “Bringer of Doom”?

OPHELTES

B2: At Patroclus’ funeral games in the Iliad, which of the Greeks beats Leonteus, Ajax Telamon, and Epeius in the throwing competition, which some commentators interpret as a discus contest?

POLYPOETES

12. Taking place in an ἀνδρών after the conclusion of a δεῖπνον, featuring κότταβος as one form of entertainment, and centering around the κρατήρ, what type of event has a name that literally means “drinking together”?

SYMPOSIUM

B1: What was the primary function of the symposiarch at the συμπόσιον? A description is fine.

DETERMINING HOW STRONG THE WINE WOULD BE // DECIDING HOW MUCH WATER TO {MIX WITH THE WINE // DILUTE THE WINE WITH} [ACCEPT EQUIVALENTS]

B2: The συμπόσια are often compared to what Spartan eating clubs, which usually comprised about 15 soldiers?

SYSSITION / SYSSITIA

13. For the verb μανθάνω, give the third person singular, perfect active indicative — a form that uses the verb’s reduplicated perfect stem, μεμάθηκα.

μεμάθηκε(ν)

B1: Make that form aorist.

ἔμαθε(ν)

B2: Now make that form dual.

ἐμαθέτην

14. The ethnographic text Airs, Waters, Places is attributed to what author, who supposedly declared “ὁ βίος βραχὺς, ἡ δὲ τέχνη μακρὴ” — or “life is short, art is long” — in reference to the difficulty of learning medicine?

HIPPOCRATES

B1: Hippocrates is often credited with inventing the theory of the four humors, which supposedly made up and drove the human body. Give the English names for any two of those four humors.

TWO OF: PHLEGM, BLOOD, YELLOW BILE, and BLACK BILE

B2: The important Hippocratic text On The Sacred Disease identifies what disorder as possessing a natural rather than divine origin, helping shift the Greeks’ understanding of medicine away from the supernatural?

EPILEPSY

15. Note to players: There will be an extra clue after the sentence is read twice. Say in Attic Greek: “If you were to hear the sound of battle, you would quickly flee.” That’s “if you were to hear the sound of battle, you would quickly flee.” Keep in mind that future less vivid clauses like these use two optatives and, in the apodosis, the particle ἄν.

εἰ τὴν φωνὴν τῆς μαχῆς {ἀκούοις / ἀκούοιτε}, ταχέως ἄν{(ἀπο)φεύγοις / (ἀπο)φεύγοιτε} [ACCEPT EQUIVALENTS]

B1: What tense and mood would both verb forms be if you were to translate into Greek the sentence “if you were hearing the sound of battle, you would quickly flee,” a present contrafactual conditional?

IMPERFECT INDICATIVE

B2: Now translate into English this sentence from Xenophon’s Cyropaedia: “ἢν χρόνον τινὰ μέλλῃς ἐν τῷ αὐτῷ μένειν, ὑγιεινοῦ πρῶτον δεῖ στρατοπέδου μὴ ἀμελῆσαι.”

IF YOU {INTEND // ARE INTENDING // ARE GOING TO} STAY FOR SOME TIME IN THE SAME PLACE, IT IS FIRST NECESSARY {NOT TO TAKE NO HEED OF // NOT NEGLECT (TO FIND)}] A {SANITARY / HEALTHY} CAMP(SITE) [ACCEPT EQUIVALENTS]

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16. What Olympian deity, probably depicted with arms outstretched in opposite directions in a bronze statue recovered from Cape Artemisium, was honored by Libon of Elis with a temple that contained a “wonder of the world” and stood at Olympia?

ZEUS

B1: What sculptor produced the statue of Zeus at Olympia?

PH(E)IDIAS

B2: The statue of Zeus of Artemisium is often compared with the so-called “Charioteer of Delphi,” a contemporaneous bronze that what Sicilian tyrant dedicated at Delphi?

{POLYZALUS / POLYZALOS} (OF GELA)

17. What group led an ineffective attack on the fort of Phyle, whose defenders quickly moved to reclaim the Piraeus, kill Critias in battle, and recover control of Athens from a Spartan-backed oligarchy?

THIRTY TYRANTS

B1: Critias had earlier paranoically manufactured the death of what man, a son of Hagnon and the co-leader of the Thirty Tyrants?

THERAMENES

B2: What was Theramenes’ manner of death?

{DRANK HEMLOCK // FORCED TO DRINK HEMLOCK} (AND TOASTED CRITIAS’ HEALTH AS HE DID SO)

18. A set of moral precepts supposedly spoken by Chiron, a battle against Cycnus that prompts an elaborate description of Heracles’ shield, and a “Catalogue of Women” are the subjects of poems once attributed to what author of Theogony?

HESIOD

B1: The description of Heracles’ shield, like that of Achilles’ shield in Iliad 18, is an example of what narrative device in which a work of art is vividly described through words?

EKPHRASIS

B2: The ancients also attributed to Homer a poem about Heracles that was titled for his “taking” of what Greek city?

OECHALIA

19. What material was known as ξύλον in Greek, would be used to make a δόρυ, and would come from a δένδρον to build a ναῦς?

WOOD / TIMBER

B1: What is the meaning of the Greek noun μοχλός, as in the Homeric lines “οἱ μὲν μοχλὸν ἑλόντες ἐλάινον, ὀξὺν ἐπ᾽ ἄκρῳ, / ὀφθαλμῷ ἐνέρεισαν.”?

(WOODEN) BAR / STAKE

B2: What is the Greek word for “forest”?

ὕλη

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20. What goddess supposedly created the constellation Boötes to honor the plow’s invention by her son Philomelus, though this directly contradicts the story that she conceived him with Iasion while lying in a thrice-plowed field?

DEMETER

B1: What twin brother of Philomelus acted as the literal representation of the earth’s wealth?

PLUTUS

B2: Iasion founded the mystery rites on what island, from which he traveled to attend the wedding of Cadmus and Harmonia?

SAMOTHRACE

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